Personal bird of 2022

[paulos]

Hi everyone,

Do you have a personal favourite species, bird sighting or bird photo of the year? Please share!

[Bentley]

I had an amazing experience with a Northern Gannet in Nova Scotia this summer. It was my last day there, without getting my biggest target of the gannet. Feeling quite down as I had also dipped on a Grey Heron in PEI. So when we happened to visit family who had property on the shore, I was getting my hopes up. Through a bit of maybe trespassing *cough cough*, and standing through the rain, wind, and waves. I got one! Right close to shore, it dove into the water! There were tears coming down my face I was so excited. Ending up finding two! Three species of shearwaters too! It was worth getting stuck in the rocks for 2 hours with my scope awkwardly propped up on a rock!

ebird.org/checklist/S117867473 This is my eBird checklist for that bird

[graeme45]

Got 3 lifers this year.  The first was Williamson's Sapsucker.  I heard a few of them, got a brief sighting of one but wasn't able to get a photo.  The second was Common Poorwill.  Again, no photos, but one was heard well.  Lastly, and this is my personal bird of the year due to its cooperation, was the Curlew Sandpiper, which was very photogenic.

[Randy]

For me a target bird that I'd previously missed on a trip to Arizona was Harris' Hawk. I was hoping to get one when my family went to Phoenix in March. I went to a local desert preserve one morning and was treated to a Harris' Hawk perched on a cactus with mountains in the background. Perfect!


Harris's Hawk at McDowell Mountain Regional Park by Randy Walker



Harris's Hawk at McDowell Mountain Regional Park by Randy Walker

[nickinthegarden]

For me it was the Acorn Woodpecker in Ladner. It was a very dark foggy morning when I drove out there and I managed to miss my exit off the freeway and then get turned around on side roads, but I managed to get to the location just after the fog started to list. I bless young men with sharp eyes and ears as two guys spotted it and pointed it out. I was shooting into the rising sun, but I did get to see it for a bit, and I was thrilled. It was a bird on my bucket list and but I had no desire to travel to Oregon to see one, checked off the list.

[Chris]

The Acorn Woodpecker has a highlight for me as well. They have some character to them.

My personal bird of the year was a Burrowing Owl. Saw it in Washington State. Bruce and Joanne gave me the suggestion to check at this location and one of the birds was standing on a rock.


Burrowing Owl at 11752–11798 Road A NW, Ephrata US-WA 47.26756, -119.51154

[ed]

This year I was out of country for much of our migration months, 6 weeks in spring, exploring S Dakota to Utah. In fall I was in PEI(at Canadian disk golf championship) for a week and then 2 more months in Spain and Portugal till Nov 12. The only lifer I saw(in Canada) was the Whooper Swan at Trout L in Vancouver. So I found About 75 lifers in Spain, but missed the bulge of migration there as well. So many great birds, such as Flamingo, Griffin, Red Kites, and a lot of passerines. So I’ll chose a bird, the Blue Rock-Thrush one of the first birds early in the trip. Ronda is a spectacular town built up on both sides of a deep rocky gorge with a long-run history that is mind boggling. Here I saw a bird kind of like our Canyon Wren sallying out from the cliff face. It was several hundred meters below a bridge spanning the cliffs that I was on. Sone careful observation, and guidebook sleuthing and I had the satisfaction of a positive ID. Blue Rock-Thrush!